1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates in general to a power-saving display method and associated apparatus, and more particularly, to a power-saving display method and associated apparatus developed to avoid sacrificing display quality.
2. Description of the Related Art
Displays capable of presenting motionless and/or motion-laden frames have become one of the most important interfaces of modern electronic products. Displays, such as monitors, projectors and televisions, are widely applied in mobile phones, portable devices, computers, and audio-visual electronic equipment.
A display generally displays a frame with a panel (e.g., a liquid crystal display (LCD)) cooperating with a light source (e.g., a backlight source of a cathode ray tube (CRT) or of a light-emitting diode (LED)). A luminance (luma) presented by a display is directly associated with the luma presented by a panel. Regarding the luma of the panel, the frame consists of a plurality of pixels, and the panel includes a plurality of pixel units corresponding to the pixels. Each of the pixel units controls a transparency (transmittance) of the pixel unit with respect to the light source according to a corresponding luma value to control the luminance (luma) presented by the panel. For example, as the corresponding luma value transmitted to a specific pixel unit becomes larger, the transparency of the corresponding pixel unit gets higher for allowing more light beams provided by the light source to pass through the pixel unit, and thus a higher luma is presented. On the other hand, the brightness of the light source is also a factor that affects the luma presented by the display. For example, given that the luma value of a specific pixel unit is constant, the luma presented by the pixel unit gets higher as the brightness of the light source increases. In other words, the luma of the pixel units of the display are dependent on the luma values corresponding to the pixel units and the brightness of the light source.
Moreover, power consumed by the light source accounts for a large part in overall power consumption of the display. Therefore, overall power consumption may be effectively reduced by reducing power consumption of the light source to achieve power saving.